The Zabini Way of Life
by The Cell
Summary: At sixteen all Blaise Zabini wanted was to be left alone. Just for everyone to leave him to his scathing comments and not bother him with their petty differences.


Again, I'm just playing around with someone else's work. J.K.R, I assume you've heard of her?

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When they were all in fifth year, it had been complicated. The original war was a fairly straight forward good against evil deal. Voldemort wanted muggleborns dead, the other side didn't. Now however, there was a three front war going on. Voldemort was back to trying to rid the world of muggleborns, Dumbledore was still trying to stop him, and the Ministry was standing somewhere in the middle, dazed and confused, fervently ignoring both sides in favor of imaginary peace. This left most people wandering aimlessly between any two sides and greatly entertained Laramie Zabini. It had been her favorite topic of discussion for months, much to the dismay of her new husband, who had to listen to her discuss the intricate politics of the British war at his own wedding.

Blaise Zabini was not as amused. His mother took great pride in the Zabini neutrality. Zabinis had been neutral for a good 400 years at least. Blaise saw the looks his family got for it too. The "good" side found it immoral not to fight for the cause, the "bad" found it cowardly; the Zabinis thought it was the sane thing to do. For centuries the Zabinis had stood, not in the middle or on the sidelines (as neutral parties had a tendency to do), but way off to the side somewhere, preferably on a high cliff where they would be out of the line of fire and could scoff and mutter amongst themselves about how stupid the petty arguments were. While there were a few prominent pureblood families who exercised neutrality, the Zellers and the Peaks for instance, most were neutral out of fear or loyalty to friends and family, or other such reasons that made people join the war in the first place, the Zabinis were neutral until such time a side was presented to them that they agreed with. Not a lot of people knew it, but while official statements of neutrality had been made by heads of some families, the Zabini matron in 1684 had stated that "We'll join your side when you make a side worth joining" and in true Italian fashion, family came first. That was the family's M-O and they stuck to it.

Blaise did not intend to break tradition, Dumbledore's plan seemed foolhardy at best, no doubt why it attracted so many Gryffindors. Joining Voldemort's side had been out of the question from the get go. While Blaise had been raised with the belief of pureblood superiority, he could easily recognize the flaw in the plan of killing off more than half of the wizarding world's population. Besides which he was having doubts. Pureblood superiority had been an obvious truth to a young Blaise Zabini, after all, his mother was the epitome of good breeding with both looks and skill. The reason for the now slightly older boy's doubts was one Hermione Granger. She was a talented witch, not even he could deny it. For now he treated her existence as an exception, an anomaly if you will, but exceptions left room for doubt. Doubt in turn, introduced a need for further research, and further research found Crabbe and Goyle. These were two of the oldest wizarding families around, they couldn't claim oldest simply because there were a few families that had been around before the written records had been created, they'd been battling it out for the title ever since. Crabbe and Goyle however, happened to be everything muggleborns were supposed to be, and sadly they didn't seem to be an exception. The wizarding world was littered with poor excuses for humans and they seemed to be fairly equally divided amongst the blood groups. Blaise had lost his faith in pureblood supremacy, but that was not to say he'd lost faith in Zabini supremacy. In the Zabini family history, only one had reportedly died of anything other than old age and natural causes. Blaise's great uncle Giovanni had been shot to death by the jealous husband of one of his lovers. Families like the Potters and Longbottoms had lost members in every war or violent conflict since the crusades. Even the Zellers had lost a fair few in the crossfire of past disputes. Blaise didn't see why other people looked up to such thoroughly stupid behavior.

Blaise, like all of his relatives, had a lot of opinions on politics. In fact, most of his relatives had been elected for office in their respective countries and fields of interest. The part about the current war that bothered him, kept him from joining in the debates at family get-togethers was that he, as a student, had to face all the teenagers with misconstrued notions of his neutrality being fear or indecisiveness. War, to Blaise, meant countless Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs approaching him with reassurances that their side was bound to win and talk of how Dumbledore would save him. The Slytherins weren't much better, with thinly veiled comments about how the Dark Lord rewarded loyalty, and punished cowardice.

At sixteen all Blaise Zabini wanted was to be left alone. Just for everyone to leave him to his scathing comments and not bother him with their petty differences. He realized that the blame for this particular war lay mostly with Voldemort, and resented him for it, but didn't particularly see the point in arguing with him on his world domination scheme, as it seemed doomed for failure with or without Dumbledore's involvement. Sure, Dumbledore and Potter could speed up his demise, but left to his own devices Voldemort would soon alienate his own followers to the point where their disdain would win over their fear. Why couldn't everyone just mind their own business? Clearly if everyone took on the Zabini way of life the world would be a lot simpler. But then it would also be filled with old people, and most people didn't age as gracefully as his own relatives. Maybe the world wouldn't be aesthetically as…pleasing if the Bulstrodes stared living past 80, but it would be so wonderfully calm.

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Well...that was fun.


End file.
